Well, looking at Amazon both the Day One XB1 and Launch PS4 are sold out, but they are still selling regular editions. MS discussed their Day One system, but I haven't heard anything from Sony about a Special Launch SKU for the PS4. Probably Launch is just there initial stock they are allocated

My post had the details, here it is again:

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Product AlertThe standard version of the PlayStation 4 is identical to the Launch Edition. Due to high demand, we cannot guarantee Release-Date Delivery on the standard version of the PlayStation 4. We will deliver the standard version of PlayStation 4 as close to its release date as possible.

Wow, thanks for the size comparison pic. From all the standalone pics I've seen so far I just assumed all these consoles were about the same size.

That's what I was thinking too before I saw the comparison picture. The PS4 has a smaller footprint and it's slimmer.

The comparison picture also makes me shake my head in disapointment at MS not even trying with their console design for the Xbox one. I'm looking forward to reading the industry development post-mortem on the Xbox One whenever that comes out. That can't have been their concept design. They have very talented people working for them, and that's the best they could do? I find that really hard to believe. I'm thinking they ran up against a time contraint and just said "F**k it, put it in a rectangular box, we don't have enough design/production time anymore. Some people will like the minimalist, blu-ray player look."

In an interview with CVG at E3, Yoshida explained the move was necessary to maintain a high quality service and facilitate improvements and expansions."That's [was] a big decision," he said, "what we internally discussed and decided is that we will continue the free access to online play on PS3 and Vita, so that's clear. But because on PS4 the online connectivity features such as second screen, auto downloads and share features - these are one big pillar of the PS4 experience and we will continue to invest in this area to expand and improve these online features and services.

"If we keep giving away online access for free, the natural pressure is that we have to cut down on the cost to provide this free service. But that's conflicting with our goal of being able to provide very robust and great online services going forward. So we decided that on PS4, because we want to continue to invest and improve our new services, we've asked the most engaged consumers in the online activities to share the burden with us so that we can continue to invest."

During its E3 press conference Sony revealed PlayStation 4 owners must subscribe to PlayStation Plus for $5 a month to play online multiplayer and access a number of additional benefits.

"To make the pain a little bit less we will continue to offer free content with instant game collections, discounts and early access to betas on PS4 as well," Yoshida continued.

"So at the beginning we typically picked from older games for the instant game collection on Vita and PS3, but because everything is new on PS4 we decided to make a smaller version of Drive Club with all the online features open, included in that instant game collection on day one.

"In addition to that we add one digital game every month, so they get high quality indie games as well on top of what they get on PS3 and Vita. So hopefully that makes people's decision easy to join PS Plus."

During the press conference Sony confirmed PlayStation Plus memberships will carry over to PlayStation 4, so current members will have access to all of the benefits across PS3, PS Vita and PS4 for one price.

Sony later confirmed in a Tweet that PS4 users that aren't Plus members "can still enjoy single-player games and access to media services won't require Plus".

PlayStation 4 will launch this Christmas in Europe and North America for 399 USD / Euros or £349 GBP. A free PlayStation Plus version of Drive Club will be available to Plus subscribers at launch.

IMO,its not paying for Online access,for me its getting even more for your PS+ sub

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A free PlayStation Plus version of Drive Club will be available to Plus subscribers at launch

It is confirmed that the new proprietary hard drive is powered entirely by anti-Microsoft rage.

The only difference I can see possibly happening is a SSD instead of a traditional laptop drive, but given the price, that seems extremely unlikely. And they're certainly not going to put a full-sized HDD in there, so it should be the same laptop drive.

And, yeah, mo, 500gb isn't going to last long. OTOH, it'll probably last for a bit, and the price of drives is constantly falling, so you may be better off waiting.

The comparison picture also makes me shake my head in disapointment at MS not even trying with their console design for the Xbox one. I'm looking forward to reading the industry development post-mortem on the Xbox One whenever that comes out. That can't have been their concept design. They have very talented people working for them, and that's the best they could do? I find that really hard to believe. I'm thinking they ran up against a time contraint and just said "F**k it, put it in a rectangular box, we don't have enough design/production time anymore. Some people will like the minimalist, blu-ray player look."

I'm not planning on buying the Xbone anytime soon, but the design I like. I prefer consoles that don't look out of place with the rest of my A/V equipment.

PS4 preorders are outpacing Xbone preorders with 3 sold to every 2 Xbone. How many Xbone preorders are people doing what I did (and Soulchilde) by preordering as a precaution with intention to cancel if MS doesn't do a reversal?

Source? 3:2 is a lot closer than I imagined it would be. Just goes to show you that the people who post regularly on forums are not the core audience.

Oh, I think the XB1 will do fine this holiday, due to the "dudebros" who don't care or know about what the system is/does....they just know it's XBOX and that is what they play Call of Duty on, so they are getting it. The real test will be next year, if it is still $100 more expensive than the PS4 and more people know about the DRM/Cloud/no renting of games thing.

When I went in to preorder the PS4, the manager was ecstatic that I was preordering that PS4. He was saying that Sony hit a homerun and playing up the system like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I asked about the XB1 and he just laughed and pretty much made it sound like it was the worst system he had ever had the displeasure to sell/take preorders for.

Anyway, it makes sense for them, business wise to push the PS4 with all the DRM on used games and such. The publisher has to specifically opt-out of the DRM, in order to allow the game to be traded in. It is defaulted to being on. How many do you think are going to do that, especially in the first 60 days of the release of the game?

PS4 preorders are outpacing Xbone preorders with 3 sold to every 2 Xbone. How many Xbone preorders are people doing what I did (and Soulchilde) by preordering as a precaution with intention to cancel if MS doesn't do a reversal?

When I went in to preorder the PS4, the manager was ecstatic that I was preordering that PS4. He was saying that Sony hit a homerun and playing up the system like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I asked about the XB1 and he just laughed and pretty much made it sound like it was the worst system he had ever had the displeasure to sell/take preorders for.

I had a similar experience at Game yesterday. The people behind the counter had nothing good to say about the Xbox One, and I got the impression that they actively discouraged people from preordering it, instead advising them to go for the PS4.

Not surprising, and that is likely a corporate mandate for employees just like pushing trade ins. A bit shady but we all know why they're doing it.

No,their relationship with MS is still important, and if GameStop doesn't reserve their allocation, MS will give it to someone else. What you are seeing is the fact that the people that run and work in these stores are people just like us. They are telling customers the same things many of us would. Now, I wouldn't put it past corporate having some kind of incentive for PS4s, like a contest or something.

It has significant advantages in memory bandwidth and raw GPU performance, yes. I don't necessarily think that will show up immediately, but over time should make a difference. What might be event bigger factor is if significant amounts of CPU power are reserved for all the system stuff in the background, as has been suggested. If the XB1 has more CPU overhead, that could make the difference even more apparent from the start.

It has significant advantages in memory bandwidth and raw GPU performance, yes. I don't necessarily think that will show up immediately, but over time should make a difference. What might be event bigger factor is if significant amounts of CPU power are reserved for all the system stuff in the background, as has been suggested. If the XB1 has more CPU overhead, that could make the difference even more apparent from the start.

XB1 triple headed OS would appear to have a much bigger RAM requirement than the PS4, so the PS4 should have more RAM available for games as well even though they both have 8 overall.

It has significant advantages in memory bandwidth and raw GPU performance, yes. I don't necessarily think that will show up immediately, but over time should make a difference. What might be event bigger factor is if significant amounts of CPU power are reserved for all the system stuff in the background, as has been suggested. If the XB1 has more CPU overhead, that could make the difference even more apparent from the start.

XB1 triple headed OS would appear to have a much bigger RAM requirement than the PS4, so the PS4 should have more RAM available for games as well even though they both have 8 overall.

The numbers I've seen are 3 GB reserved for the OS on the Xbox One, with roughly 500 MB reserved on the PS4. I don't think we've heard anything definite about this though.

Yeah, the Xb1 has some major limitations with it's RAM with the whole three OS thing. A huge chunk of it is going to be reserved for that monster OS. That and the RAM itself is quite a bit slower than the PS4's RAM.

Also, as others stated....the CPU and GPU are underpowered as well, compared to the PS4.